


Beat of My Heart

by The_Great_Nation



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - Music, First Impressions, Gen, Harry Potter loves music, Hogwarts First Year, Musician Harry Potter, Ravenclaw Harry Potter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:41:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24881743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Great_Nation/pseuds/The_Great_Nation
Summary: “Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.”An alternate universe where a young Harry was exposed to the world of music.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 87





	Beat of My Heart

Nerves were trying to take over his body. Harry looked over the crowd. There must have been over one hundred people watching him. All of them bathed in the dim light created by the candles floating overhead. 

He was no stranger to having so many eyes look his way, but their ceaseless stares set him on edge nonetheless. 

The steps he took were carefully taken to match the beat in his brain. The same beat he had been drumming his fingers to for the past couple of minutes as the students around him dwindled letter by letter.

Harry got one brief glimpse of those eyes straight forward as he sat in the stool. The gazes of his classmates were a mix of so many things that he found great comfort in the way the hat obscured his vision.

Fingers once again took to drumming against his thigh and a soft hum threatened to make itself vocal. Only years of having to suppress the urge less he face the Dursley’s wrath kept his voice silent. 

The hat hummed for him instead, not a musical sort of one, but the kind that let the listener know they were curious and intrigued by something. 

There was no debate to be had with the hat and Harry. 

“Curious” a voice that was not his own resonated in his mind.

That same voice spoke aloud this time, not just in Harry’s head. 

“RAVENCLAW” it called out to the silent room.

Harry did not want to remove the hat from his head and face the silence and stares he knew awaited. 

He did not have much of choice though, while half of the students had already been sorted there was still another group waiting for their turn. 

As the muggles say, “It is time to face the music”.

He gingerly removed the old hat on his head and gently placed it onto the stool he had just stood from.

The elderly lady who had placed it on his head had made no movement to take it from him and he would rather not stay in the limelight and wait for her to do so.

When he began to move towards the blue and bronze table an enthusiastic applause began from the table behind the stool. A small man had stood to give Harry a round of applause.

Clapping was as infectious as laughter sometimes, soon the entire room was clapping and smiling. 

The table he joined clapped the loudest and the longest with the other tables making a polite effort.

No longer shocked into a stupor the elderly lady cleared her throat before calling the next student forward.

===

Everyone seemed to question why and how Harry Potter ended up in Ravenclaw. 

In the beginning, there were those who simply believed Harry should have been in Gryffindor due to his status as the-boy-who-lived and his parentage. 

These thoughts came mostly from Gryffindor itself and Slytherin, since the two houses were so set in their opposite beliefs they could not believe Harry, the pariah of light, could be someone so neutral.

The number of people who doubted how Harry ended up in Ravenclaw only seemed to grow.

Unlike his fellow eagles Harry did not spend his free time in the library nor did he spend it studying with friends. All too often his classmates would find him sitting before the handless door to their dormitories stuck due to his inability to figure out even the simplest of riddles or questions.

When homework, tests, and practicals came about the professors realized how remarkably average the boy was in grades. 

However, it should be noted the average came when in comparison to the rest of the Hogwarts student body. Harry was near the bottom of the ranks for Ravenclaw.

There were of course subjects he did above average in such as charms and transfiguration, managing to be among the first few to correctly learn a spell, but overall he was… just not Ravenclaw material.

One of the only people who would beg to differ would be the boy’s head of house Flitwick. He was always quick to back up his student with reminders that while Ravenclaw was home to those with intelligence and wisdom it also welcomed those with originality and individuality.

The Professors ignored their short colleague on account that Harry Potter was in his house so of course, he would proudly defend the boy at all costs. 

===

Harry had never been popular in school. Whether it be a public muggle school or a private wizarding school there was no shortage of loneliness and bullying.

It seemed that everyone in Ravenclaw had got in on wisdom and wit alone and not with acceptance.

Creativity was another feature many of Harry’s housemates lacked it seemed because really Dudley had come up with much more interesting insults and names.

The animosity mostly came from the students in his year, with the older Ravenclaws just giving him sympathetic or apathetic looks as they answered the question that would let them into the common room.

Since he had years of experience with social ostracization Harry adapted to Hogwarts rather quickly and with great ease. There had been a small part of him that hoped to make at least one friend in the castle, but with each lonely day, that dream seemed to drift away with the breeze.

With so much time on his hands Harry took to wandering the everchanging castle he now called home. 

There were so many rooms for so little students that Harry found entire wings of the school covered in layers of dust. It seemed that even Filch had forgotten or ignored these useless and unused halls.

Once Harry learned the unlocking spell his adventures became more fruitful.

Doors that had once been locked were now open to his view. Not many of the doors in Hogwarts had been locked as they held nothing of impotence in their walls. All he would find would be dusty desks and yellowing books.

Those that were locked were closets that had once held potion ingredients or parlor rooms with more expensive furniture within. 

Harry’s exploration of the castle only stopped a couple of months in. Not because he had thoroughly discovered everything. No, he knew he would likely never finish exploring the castle within his first year.

It was on a cold October afternoon Harry found a locked door that led to what was once a music room.

The instruments were all old, but well crafted and beautiful.

It was a grand structure in the center-left of the room that drew his attention the most. The piano must have been pitch black at one point, but a dull gray was draped on every available surface like ash. 

He brought a finger down the fall covering the keys. A shiny, pitch-black exterior greets him when he lifts his dirtied finger. 

Once he carefully lifts the fall a row of pure ivory keys captivate him. Unlike the dusty exterior, the keys shimmer under the light of a Lumos. Bright, beautiful, and breath-taking. 

Hogwarts had stolen his breath as well the first time he saw it from the tiny boat Hagrid huddled him and two other students into. Still, even his new home could not compare to these dazzling ivory stars.

Gently he presses down on one of the keys and oh… the sound they create makes a shaky smile quiver into place.

Magic is surely a wonderful thing. It must have been years, decades even, since this piano had been touched, yet each note was perfect. 

His fingers danced over the keys letting the music sing in the vacant room. Harry had been worried for a moment when he saw the old beast. While he had played the piano for years tuning was beyond his expertise. 

The next week Harry returned to the room with a new spell. Professor Flitwick had said his office was always open and his knowledge available and he would not let his anxiety keep him returning the magnificent structure to its original beauty. 

Of course, he did not immediately set out to the music room. Spells were tricky business and Harry was no genius. Practice makes perfect and all that. 

For days on end, Harry put more time and effort into this one spell then he had in any other before. Even more so then the ones he had to research for homework.

Once he was confident he could perform the spell without messing it up he tested it on a dusty cello in the corner.

Finding nothing broken and all the dust is gone, from interior and exterior alike, Harry moved onto the masterpiece in the corner. 

Reverence filled him when his job was done. A pure black sky dotted with stars.

For these past few months Harry has had nothing to settle himself with other than his own body and voice.

In the great humming drone of the great hall, Harry is able to hum all he likes. The voices hum around him, but it is not the pleasant thing Harry occupies himself with. It is listless and everywhere with crescendos and decrescendos. Off note voices squeak and break with puberty and emotion alike in a non-stop insane hum of noise.

This is not what Harry does. Surrounded by so much noise, everyone strains to listen to ignore anything not a part of their own conversation. Harry hums to memorized and all new beats alike.

At times he’ll write what he can down as he hums, trying to tie down the fleeting rhythm in his head. If he’s daring he’ll even tap his fork against his plate rather than drum his fingers against his body or the table. 

Harry hums a familiar and simple tune now as he sits on the wooden bench before the piano.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Fur Elise, The Entertainer, Clair de Lune.

The classics are the first to come to mind, a familiar comfort that soothed places that simple humming and tapping could not reach.

However, Harry continued on to more modern tunes. Earworms that toyed with him for hours leaving him desperate for a radio that played anything muggle. 

Ride on Time, Gonna Make you Sweat, Where Love Lives, It's The End of the World as We Know It.

The sweet vibrations filling the air get him excited, even the wrong notes he plays are ignored in favor of enjoying the flow as it bounces across the room, hitting the walls, instruments, and Harry alike.

For the first time in months, since Harry first saw that gleaming castle come into view over the horizon, he is happy.

===

It has been centuries since Hogwarts was founded with only a few stray ghosts and the Sorting Hat to remember the true goals and wishes of the founders. 

By the time Harry’s generation had come around the houses and what they stood for had been boiled down to many as just one single trait. Brave, Cunning, Loyal, and Wise. 

Purebloods and Halfbloods knew the houses they were supposed to be in before they even stepped foot onto Hogwarts soil. Muggle Born children guessed their houses on the train ride like a game. Going off of frivolous details about themselves like the choice would come from a magazine questionnaire relating their favorite color to the car of their dreams or how many children they secretly wanted.

Few thought more deeply about what each of the houses meant. 

===

In the end, there were a few simple truths to be had over the debate of Harry Potter. 

Harry Potter was cunning. He had to be to trick Aunt Petunia into letting Harry sit in on Dudley’s piano lessons and later join the school’s orchestra. 

Harry Potter also valued loyalty. A trait that was enforced not by his family, but rather the kindly music teacher who stood by Harry and argued for his continued education in the musical field. 

Harry Potter showed true bravery. It took no small amount of courage to place yourself before thousands of scrutinizing eyes and perform with steady fingers. 

Harry Potter was also wise. Not in spellcraft or potions. Nor in any other academic pursuit. Rather Harry could gush for hours on his favorite composers and artists. He could teach the scales and define musical terms to experts and beginners alike.

His wisdom was by no means conventional for the house of Ravenclaw, but it was knowledge he had taken years to learn and master nonetheless.

Harry yearned to learn more music. He learned the classics by paper and modern music by ear. Painstakingly sitting in front of the piano at the church trying to form the right notes to match the popular music on the radio. 

As his skills grew he even began to write down the nameless tunes he had hummed to himself during those dark and lonely nights in the cupboard beneath the stairs. 

A woman’s voice sometimes joined in to hum a forgotten note or add a new piece.

There was no question to Harry why he was in Ravenclaw. No question on why the hat took no time at all to choose his house. 

A curious and creative mind had no better home than the house of blue and bronze.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! Sorry I don't really go into much depth with the backstory or what happens afterword, but this kinda just came to me on a whim. 
> 
> I imagine it all started with Harry going along with Dudley to Piano lessons because Petunia doesn't want to deal with him and it was a two for one deal or something.
> 
> Harry falls in love with music and does everything to play or listen to it. Every Sunday he goes to church just so he can listen to the organ play during service and eventually they let him play on an old piano they have. He would also have joined to school's band I think, but not the choir. He can play like no other, but god help should he choose to sing rather than hum.
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading!


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